By now, of course, everyone’s heard that Peter Mackay is running National Defence, Maxime Bernier is at Foreign Affairs and so on. But there were some other important shuffles happening as well — a re-jigging of the membership of cabinet’s seven committees.
Let me repeat something I wrote last January:
Committees of cabinet are important institutions. It is at committee, for example, that legislation or new initatiatives is hashed around. The new secretaries of state do not normally attend meetings of the full cabinet but they will attend meetings of a cabinet committee.
Prime Minister Martin had a relatively large number of cabinet committees, a function partly of the fact that he had a large cabinet. Prime Minister Harper had a slimmed down cabinet and a slimmed down committee structure with just six cabinet committees. Today, though, with five more ministers, he has added a new cabinet committee, “Environment and Energy Security”, and changed some of the leadership positions on other cabinet committees
Looking back to 2007, I identified Jim Prentice and Tony Clement as taking some big steps in terms of consolidating their influence with cabinet.
Now, two days ago, Prentice was a member of five cabinet committees and chaired two of them. Now he’s on just two committees and chairs only one. I think the most likely reading of that move is that his previous workload was crazy and this new workload, combined with the heavy-duty Industry portfolio, is still plenty busy. And, after all, Prentice is still on the all-powerful Priorities and Planning Committee (the only one Harper chairs) and chairs the second most powerful committee, Operations. (Only one other cabinet minister sits on both of those committees. Read on to find out who.)
Clement, though, continues to ascend, if you ask me. Clement — who was not shuffled and remains Health Minister and Minister for FEDNOR— loses his chairmanship of the Social Affairs committee but picks up chairmanship of the Environment and Energy Security Committee. EES is a new committee established at the last shuffle that could be increasingly important to the government’s agenda. I’m not so sure Social Affairs was the committee where it’s at.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appears to be in the PM’s doghouse. Last week, before the shuffle, I asked University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan what he thought Harper would be trying to accomplish with the shuffle. Flanagan, who taught Harper and was once Harper’s chief of staff, said that he expected Harper and his advisors would want to do something about “the needless political damage” done to the governnment by Finance. Flanagan was articulating what some other government insiders had been saying privately: Harper blames Flaherty for mishandling some taxation files, one reason why there was speculation last week that Flaherty might be shuffled off to Industry. Instead, Flaherty loses the influential leadership positions of chairman of the Economic Affairs committee and is no longer vice-chairman of Treasury Board, though he still a member of those committees. He continues to be a member of Priorities and Planning, as well. Some sources close to Flaherty, both here in Ottawa and from back in his Queen’s Park days, have said he is disappointed with the PMO’s moves.
Flaherty’s move has not gone unnoticed by the Opposition, either. Here’s what one senior Liberal MP told me:
What we have is 2 1/2 demotions. Clearly O'Connor and Oda, but also it's a major slap in the face for the finance minister to be deprived of chairing the cabinet's key economic committee. It's bad for Canada when the PM sends this clear message of diminished faith in his CFO, while allowing him to soldier on wounded.
There are plenty of other leadership changes within the cabinet committees:
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Harper, as I mentioned, remains chair of P&P and is vice-chair continues to be Lawrence Cannon, the Transport Minister. International Trade Minister David Emerson is the only new member of that committee. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl are dropped from P&P.
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Prentice leads Ops and Government House Leader continues to be his vice-chair. New members of Operations include Nicholson, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl and new Secretary of State Diane Ablonczy. Out at Ops is Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose, Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Cannon, Emerson, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, National Revenue Minister Gordon O’Connor, and Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg.
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So who sits on both P&P and Ops and therefore has more juice? Prentice and Treasury Board President Vic Toews. Who used to sit but doesn’t anymore? Cannon.
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Peter MacKay is the new chair of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, replacing Justice Minister Rob Nicholson who becomes vice-chair. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day was vice-chair; now he’s just a member of that committee.
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Toews, by dint of his job, was and is Treasury Board president. Ambrose is now vice-chair of Treasury Board but, as noted, no longer sits on Ops and, as a result no longer sits on at least one of the two “power” committees of Cabinet. She is also dropped from Economic Growth but remains on Environment and Energy Security (EES).
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On Social Affairs, Senator Marjory LeBreton assumes the chairmanship, replacing Clement. Strahl becomes vice-chair, replacing Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who is now just a committee member.
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Finley moves over to become vice-chair of Economic Affairs while the previous vice-chair, Emerson, moves up to chair that committee, replacing Flaherty. That’s a shift many business lobbyists in Ottawa have taken note of.